Put a ‘Ring’ on it
The eventually reopened Metropolitan Opera promises a swift return to its status quo ante as a farm team for the English National Opera, sharing the London company’s new Ring cycle directed by vieillard terrible Richard Jones.
robert lepage
Hoarders
“Gelb said the Ring probably will return in five or six years…”
The end is the beginning of the end
At the Metropolitan Opera’s Götterdämmerung on Saturday afternoon, the fires which consumed the Gods burned lukewarm.
Welcome to the Machine
The “the ‘most authentic aspect of Lepage’s production is the overall failure of its illusionist agenda.”
Born to lose
“Robert Lepage‘s direction of a crucial scene in the Ring is even worse than Otto Schenk‘s, if such a thing is possible.”
Chanson d’amour
Much like Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which launched the Met’s 2016-2017 season, Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin is an opera about love and death.
The chopping block?
After five flops in a row, Mr. McVicar continues to win new assignments from the Met.
Between the conception and the creation between the emotion and the response
So finally we can see what the Robert Lepage Ring would have looked like if only the Machine hadn’t been totally fucked.
Plank your lucky stars
The next scheduled appearance of the Met’s Ring production has been canceled, as irrevocably as these things can ever be.
Avec la participation exceptionnelle de La Machine
La Cieca is always delighted when Met stars “cross over” into more popular genres of entertainment.
Requiem for a dream
Last night, La Cieca finally got around to watching that documentary about the rocky road to the new Ring at the Met, and she has a thought or two about this whole brouhaha.
I enjoy being a valkyrie
So, take a look after the jump and tell La Cieca the two things that are wrong (they’re related) about the cover of the Met’s new Ring DVD/Blu-ray.
The Wurm turns
The Met’s controversial Ring cycle, directed by Robert Lepage (not pictured) and conducted by TBA (possibly pictured) makes its home video debut on September 11.
Planks, for the memory
The Robert Lepage production of the Ring cycle will be shown complete (including the now de rigueur fifth part of the pentalogy, Wagner’s Dream) September 11-14 on PBS
You got a brand new key signature
You can call Robert Lepage many things (and the critics have!), but one thing you cannot call him is “inflexible.”
When Divas Collide II: Mad Men Edition
To kick off this week’s intermission feature, cher public, La Cieca invites you to imagine who said what to whom to make two legendary ladies laugh so lustily?
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth
“The Met’s new Ring is the most frustrating opera production I have ever had to grapple with.”
Eye rolling
It turns out we were wrong all along, cher public: the Robert Lepage production of the Ring at the Met is in fact a triumph.
Ass backwards
Zachary Woolfe went to Las Vegas and all we got was a thoughtful analysis of why Robert Lepage was never a good fit for the Ring.
Sound of gnashing teeth noted
A phrase no one ever thought to see in print…
Mein Ross! Sei mir gegrüsst!
“Pound for pound, ton for ton, it is the most witless and wasteful production in modern operatic history.”
Frequent flier
Leave it to those Torontonians to blow the lid off an opera story happening in New York! (Goodness knows the local journalists don’t bother.)
Twilight of the Machine
“Now that it has become apparent that Robert Lepage‘s production of the Ring at the Met is a fiasco (too soon? Nah.)… well, anyway, since arguably the production is a dreary, unworkable, overpriced mess whose primary (perhaps only) virtue is that it actually hasn’t killed anyone yet, and since, let’s face it, the Machinecentric show turned out to be so mind-bogglingly […]
You might want to sing it note for note
Those lucky few of you who manage to scare up tickets to the Met’s second Ring cycle of the spring ($3,500 top) will no doubt want to start crossing your fingers now that nothing goes wrong with “The Machine” at the “prologue-evening” Das Rheingold April 26.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
